Saturday, June 02, 2012

Over at Cruisers Forum there is a rehashing of the whole liferaft vs dinghy as liferaft discussion and, as always, there is very little to take away from it except that it is a polarizing subject.

As far as I'm concerned, I mostly tend to agree with the dinghy as liferaft posse. Partly because I've read Steven Callahan's "Adrift" (really a must read for anyone going offshore further than they care to swim back) and while we lived in France one of the sailing magazines ran a series of very scary articles about the poor performance of liferafts, as well as the sorry (if not criminal) state of the industry when it comes to quality control and the servicing of rafts.

Speaking of Steven Callahan, I should also mention that he's designed a very interesting dinghy/liferaft known as the F.R.I.B. (folding rigid-bottomed inflatable boat) which makes all kinds of sense but has not exactly caught on. Of course, folks of a DIY bent could easily adapt the ideas encompassed in the F.R.I.B. to any number of stitch and glue dinghy designs...